AB 1998 passed out of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, which means, beginning of January 1, 2012, stores will phase out of handing out single use plastic grocery bags in California.
Assembly member and author of the bill, Santa Monica’s Julia Brownley said, “We are taught to reduce, reuse, recycle in that order because we can’t recycle our way to a better world,” Brownley said in a statement. “This bill gets to the root of our litter problem by reducing our use of disposable bags. A statewide ban on single-use bags will persuade shoppers to switch to reusable bags and save Californians some of the $25 million a year spent on cleaning up bag litter.” Of the 19 million single-use bags discarded annually in California, only 5% of them are recycled, said Brownley. (LAist) The new proposed law will allow sales of recycled paper bags to consumers for five cents if they forget to bring their reusable grocery bags.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he looked forward to signing the bill into law after hearing that AB1998 passed in the Assembly on June 2, 2010.
And the most recent city to look into banning plastic bags since CA started it’s campaign is Portland Oregon. On July 14, 2010, Portland’s mayor Sam Adams pledged to eliminate plastic bags from his city.
Do you want your city or state to start banning plastic bags?
Sign the petition today!
Related posts:
- {Thoughts on Shops} – Juani1 – Crocheting Plastic Bags & More
- {Eco-Tutorial} How to Make a Coupon Wallet Without Sewing Using a Reusable Grocery Bag
- Making Mailing Envelopes from Recycled Store Paper Bags
This post was written by...
ecokaren – has written 85 awesome posts on Eco Etsy.
Karen lives a simple, frugal, green life and shares her eco tips and news on ecokaren She is the proud Captain of EcoEtsy, an awesome team of enthusiastic green business owners who keep her empowered daily. She sells green goodies in her Etsy shop and writes for various green blogs. When she's not leading the team or blogging, she is a chauffeur to two greenagers, wife to an accidental recycler, master chef to hungry locavores, seamstress, knitter, and dumpster diver, not necessarily in that order.
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The new proposed law will allow sales of recycled paper bags to consumers for five cents if they forget to bring their reusable grocery bags.
I signed the petition! This is excellent news that anyone is doing it at all but not a surprise that Cali leads the way. Of course now that Portland is on board I bet its only a matter of time before Boston follows as we typically are in competition with them to try to be the Greenest city! We haven’t caught up yet but we’re trying
I love this! Even though I rely on single use plastic bags to make my baskets my family has always used reusable cloth bags for shopping. I have been to stores in Germany where you have to pay for bags. I also like to think that someday it wont be easy for me to find plastic and then maybe I will have more time to spin wool, my first love…lol
I just signed the petition. thanks for the great article, Karen!
Seattle has a bag “fee” which I am all in favor of! IKEA also charges for their bags and I love that. It forces a new habit. I’ve been caught a few times buying more than I thought I was going to, and had to just put everything from the cart to my trunk as my punishment
Actually the bill left the committed to the Senate for debate and a vote…We will have to wait and see if it passes..
Hooray CA and Portland!
In CO, a well known health food chain – Natural Grocers/Vitamin Cottage – which now has 30+ stores throughout the southwest began going bag-less last year. Customers have to use a reusable bag or boxes left out for customers from orders that came in and so far, the owners estimate that they have save 13 million plastic bags…that’s one relatively small company. Can you imagine the impact this will have in a state as big as CA?
This is terrific and I’m ashamed to say that this is the first I’ve heard of this so thanks for sharing Karen!!
Don’t be ashamed. It’s so hard to follow all the green initiatives and legislation out there. And as Juanita pointed out, it’ll still take two years to plan and implement the law.
But it’s a start in the right direction.
I know I should be happy, but why do they need 2 years before they even start phasing them out?
Great job, California! Now let’s get all other states to follow! When will we learn?